oxy-fuel regulator upgrade

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Please forgive the double post. I also posted in the ESAB forum. So my lws has a trade-in/trade up deal that seems like a truly good deal on Victor oxy-fuel stuff. I am thinking to replace some older Smith medium duty regulators with new Victor heavy duty ones. The salesman I regularly deal with is pushing me toward SR450/460 set but I am wondering about the heavy duty Edge 2.0 ESS4 regs. Seems like ESAB has put a lot into the design and marketing. The cost difference is negligible. Is there any reason to choose the old industry standard over the new Edge regs or vice versa? Thanks,
Reply:They do offer up good deals.  Stuff gets old enough and it does brake, either using it or not using it. I going to use mine till I cant, got 1 or 2 I need to fix now.  I got enough that it doesnt leave me in a jamb up and actually was standing next to one when it went south and caught it.  Not sure about parts for Smiths but Victor is cheap. I am going to order a couple when I do. Hard to believe all that stuff is now north of 40.  I tested a set a while back that was scary, they just sit for so long.  It worked.  The trade in doesnt mean squat, its simply advertising and incentic cost. I traded one a while back and all they wanted was the body so they have a proof, goona melt them, I stripped the gauges and fittings off.  Seems I used them.    Its good to have a standard, they make a lot of tips for the Vic, I can really make it on about 2, small one saves a lot of fuel and unless a guy has big bottles the rosebud is limited.www.urkafarms.com
Reply:By the time a guy buys a few new parts, fusses around, still has some fundamentally old parts in the end anyway, I nothing wrong with an upgrade to some stuff is simply old. The price is way down compared to when I got it, cost same in todays dollars as it did 40 yrs ago.    I have a DC buzzer that works, I already pown lead in a system.  I have a Maxstar also but continue to use the buzzer as my shop stick unit simply cause it works as good and I already have it in place.  If it burned up,,, or more likely putting myself in the shoes a new customers shoes and entry would take the AC buzzer if it was give to me provided I already had the wire, same for a little DC, I give a 100 or 2 if I needed one and had wire but if I was welderless and needed to get wiork done it would be a 150 DC inverter, no way, no how anything but that first and if I really can burn it up from hard work it wont owe me and we can deal with upgrades later.  Some cases moving, considering cost per sq ft of building and wire makes selling a buzzer and buying inverter a great deal.   Not sure how long cheap inverter would take duty abuse in a rugged farm shop but a hobby guy cant wear these machines out.Last edited by Sberry; 1 Day Ago at 03:48 PM.www.urkafarms.com
Reply:Scott V or aka Brand X is someone I follow a bit due to the fact I now get he is ahead of the curve where I was way behind.  He was finding a bettyer cheaper faster way around some of it,,,, which was rather recent though in some sense as I had already bought mosto my stuff before an ivererter was a wet dream.    But he answers a lot of qiestions cost me 100 or 2 to try back in the day that didnt work very well, he says they got a 69$ machine will burn a 3/32 lo hy I believe?www.urkafarms.com
Reply:My bud isnt really a welder welder but sharp guy says he bought a 100$ machine somewhere overseas worked good.  I wasnt sure of his real ability to test but Scott is the real deal and knows where the math lands at.   I am not sure where some bench mark is today in tech, I say its mostly cost but my 15 yr old Max will burn 95A as fast as I can stick them in on a 20A 120V.    I wasted 100 on a Forney about 10 ago to see and it would only do 3/32 6011, half way thru a 1/8 or 3/32 lo hy tripped it up.www.urkafarms.com
Reply:I had an old hose crack the other day, again it was short and I was next to it.   We had air stuff running and I happened to catch it turning off maybe.   At one point we used it every day, sometimes several or even all day long with long hoses and did have new.  The plasma has really knocked the crap out of the torch use except for a bit of repair and some heating mostly nuts/bolt kind of stuff.  At one point had 2 long 100 ft hoses one on LP and kept the cutting head on and a combo on the other.  Had a tank farm chained up and simply drag hoses.  I have 50 ft plasma, I really could move it if I have to, I use a torch on occasion, goes a little in streaks.  I went back to acetylene on a cart and short hose.www.urkafarms.com
Reply:I am in a position where saving a little on materials doesnt mean much. I could use some CO2, I dont, could use LP, but again use dropped off as to make it irrelevent.  Convenience and speed when I want it is everything.www.urkafarms.com
Reply:Go home Sberry. You're drunk.


Reply:

Originally Posted by birdly

Go home Sberry. You're drunk.


Reply:No, I stray from the subject, it would get boring fast if I didnt.www.urkafarms.com
Reply:I would expect the old style traditional regulators to be more rugged and rebuildable for a lot longer than new type of plastic models.
Reply:They may be but how much more does that cost and how much extra do we pay so we can rebuild it in the future?  That was kind of the round about point I was making.   Why spend 2x today so I can fix it with parts cost more than a new one 30 years from now?    The upside of this is that the price has dropped so much it does make replacement a real and affordable option.  It now cost 1/2 what we paid for it back then.  I had a dealer try to explain it a while back.   He was trying to make the point about trade in.   If I spent 10 more today it would be worth 5 more 10 years from now.  I did point out that if I spent  10 less today I would be ahead 10 large now as well as if I traded it 10 yrs from now.Last edited by Sberry; 18 Hours Ago at 09:39 AM.www.urkafarms.com
Reply:That's great Sberry and I appreciate all your thought but my question isn't about the economics of upgrading or the value of cheap brands, it is about the differences between two different high-capacity, heavy duty regulators both made by Victor.
Reply:I have a few of the " edge" regulator and I really like them. If it isn't a real big cost difference I would go with the edge .
Reply:The Edge 2.0 ESS4 regulators are listed as medium duty, not heavy duty. I had a super nice set of Purox regulators made by ESAB, so I would have no trouble trusting the Edge 2.0 stuff, but they don't fit the bill of heavy duty flow rates. Me personally I would have the Smith regulators rebuilt. I really loved the old Smith set I had from the 1980s, before they were stolen.Miller Multimatic 255
Reply:

Originally Posted by Louie1961

The Edge 2.0 ESS4 regulators are listed as medium duty, not heavy duty. I had a super nice set of Purox regulators made by ESAB, so I would have no trouble trusting the Edge 2.0 stuff, but they don't fit the bill of heavy duty flow rates. Me personally I would have the Smith regulators rebuilt. I really loved the old Smith set I had from the 1980s, before they were stolen.
Reply:Thanks Louie. The Smith sets I have are medium duty ones from the late '90s. Even so, they've served me well. This only came up because I saw the trade-in deal when I was bringing one of the regs in for service. I didn't know what the repair would cost but I figured I could hardly go wrong to upgrade for $80. I've always liked my Smith stuff (I'll definitely keep the Smith cutting torch) and when they were independent I gave them the nod for value but now I don't think it matters much- Esab vs Miller.
Reply:Yeah, $80 is a good deal if that's all you will be out of pocket. It would cost you about that much to have the Smith's rebuilt, maybe a shade more. ESAB used to have a great video that showed how they designed their one piece regulator bodies to contain any regulator fire that got started. That feature was built into the Purox R-72 regulators (maybe others too, I am not sure). In the video they would show a regulator fire in competitors product (the regulator ended up a charred, melted mess), and then a regulator fire in an R-72. The theory (or marketing pitch) was that the solid, one piece brass billet body of the regulator would contain the fire. In the second half of the video, they would induce a fire in the R-72, and you could hardly tell it had been on fire. There was a lot of noise but the fire and damage was very well contained. I am not sure if they still produce regulators with that design feature, but I loved my R-72 regulators for just that reason. They also carried a lifetime warranty too. Hopefully ESAB hasn't strayed too much from this.Miller Multimatic 255
Reply:Esab owns Victor and has discontinued a bunch of their own apparatus. They also changed some of the tried and true Victor apparatus. Cancelling the original Purox torches was a very big mistake in my mind. There are thousands of older regulators and torches still going strong with just minor maintenance or repairs. If you can upgrade for $80 might be worth it. Regulator fires are quite rare and can be all but eliminated with flash back arrestors and using them properly.